SIXERS: Hinkie speaks softly, but carries a big stick

PHILADELPHIA — For weeks on end, Sam Hinkie decided to go on radio silence as he approached his first big day as the man in charge of the 76ers.

He wasn’t throwing out the first pitch at a Phillies game. He wasn’t hamming it up on talk radio. He wasn’t taking the bait from impatient press members wondering what, exactly, was the reason behind his treating his coaching search and pre-draft investigations with an air-tightness that the NSA might want to use as a template.

The silence, in retrospect, was deafening. He had plans for draft day. Big plans.

The Sixers’ newly christened general manager and president of basketball operations was intent on putting his stamp on the franchise Thursday night, and the best way to do that is to trade away your best player, your All-Star, the guy the organization less than a year earlier signed to a long-term contract, the type that has all the bigwigs at the press conference using phrases like “Sixer for life.”

Jrue Holiday, we hardly knew you.

The draft wasn’t 30 minutes old when the Sixers made their move, reaching an agreement with the New Orleans Pelicans — yes, they are the Pelicans this week — to trade their young point guard and a second-round selection in exchange for Kentucky center Noel Nerlens and a 2014 first-round pick from NoLa.

Later in the night, word leaked from New York about Part II of the Grand Plan: the Sixers weren’t going to let the fact that Spurs top assistant Mike Budenholzer was hired from Gregg Popovich’s stellar staff by Atlanta stop them from mining for another San Antonio assistant. Hinkie had decided to hire Brett Brown, who had been an assistant with the Spurs and the Australia National Team’s head coach at the 2012 Olympics.

Perhaps more amazing than the Spurs losing two assistant coaches to head-coaching jobs this summer is the fact that both Budenholzer and Brown waited this long for their opportunities.

It is impossible to say whether Hinkie has started a reconstruction of the Sixers that will make them a more serious threat to win an NBA title than they have been for the last decade. This is the first step down a long, winding road. Nerlens has enough talent that many forecasters thought he would be the No. 1 overall pick even though he shredded the ACL in his knee last season and won’t be physically ready to play when the NBA season starts.

Nerlens wasn’t the No. 1 pick. He dropped to sixth, and that put the wheels in motion. The Sixers followed that shocker by taking Syracuse point guard Michael Carter-Williams with the team’s 11th overall pick.

The rest of this deal is a work in progress. The Sixers won’t get one of the top three picks next season if the Pelicans (yes, that’s still the name) have their 2014 pick win the lottery. New Orleans is betting it won’t even be in the lottery, and with Holiday and what it hopes are healthy components in Eric Gordon and Anthony Davis and more money to spend, that team might be playoff-bound.

That said, the Sixers might find themselves in the heat of the lottery madness in 2014. They will have to endure the final years of Spencer Hawes, Kwame Brown, Lavoy Allen and most likely Evan Turner — if he even lasts that long. They are clearing cap space like mad for next offseason. The removal of Holiday’s $11 million-per-year extension will give the Sixers a net $7.8 million of cap space this year and about $7.5 million in 2014.

The big loser Thursday? Thad Young, who will have to be the best player on a bad team next season.

Hinkie can be the big winner — he can be. But that will require Nerlens and Carter-Williams having starting talent, and next year’s draft panning out for the Sixers as well. Then Hinkie must find a way to use his cap freedom wisely. It’s one thing to have cap space, it is another to fill it with quality. For every Celtics coup there’s a Knicks disaster or three to show how the best-laid plans don’t always pan out.